Operating on the Dissertation Behemoth for Academic Publishing

When I first entered the doctoral program in summer of 2011, I viewed academia as a place where someone else shared knowledge with me.  In that fall's doctoral seminar class, however, the professor shared bewildering information.  We needed to eventually publish.  Whether we co-authored with mentor faculty or were the sixth author on a research article, we would be in better academic and professional standings if we published in journals (although Raul Pacheco-Vega questions this logic in his recent blog post).  So, as a full-time middle school language arts teacher and part-time graduate student, I ignored this advice and focused on providing endless feedback on 8th grader drafts and writing my own projects, articles, reflections, or unit plans for graduate coursework.

Fortunately, a popular writing course at the university cycled the program every few years and fit my schedule.  Writing for Publication brought together students from across disciplines in a joint effort to resurrect old drafts for journal submission.  We dug deeply into Wendy Belcher's Writing Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks: A Guide to Academic Publishing Success.  I wish I had purchased the actual book rather than the digital version, but her website provides the consumable resources so books can stay "clean."  The intense yet practical approach pushed me to write, revise, share drafts, and revise again while also researching possible journals and attending to specific audience needs.  I finished the course successfully and submitted my manuscript, which I described in a previous blog post.  My waiting resulted in disappointment when it was rejected several months later.  With the bustle of other projects and without the pressure of a grade, I let the manuscript and feedback collect dust.

Over two years later, several pieces of writing lurk within my computer, notebooks, and coursework folders.  I have written drafts of literature reviews and reflections in preparation for my dissertation and some did, in fact, make their way into that behemoth of data and analysis.  I proudly and successfully defended my dissertation (Understanding through Narrative Inquiry: Storying a National Writing Project Initiative) on March 28, 2016.  Imagine my excitement when my committee members said they could see possibilities for six journal articles I could develop from this work.  Six!

Six! Imagine my anxiety knowing I should dissect my beautiful behemoth into smaller beasts for academic journal writing.  I wrote a semi-traditional five-chapter dissertation and pushed its boundaries only slightly with creative mini-narratives to describe findings in chapter four.  How do I distill the essential learning found in my research problem, literature review, methodology, findings and closing discussion chapters?  How do I engage in meaningful academic writing that highlights my insights about professional learning communities, teacher-leadership, planning professional development, trust, and invitation?  These are real questions for which I have not yet found answers, even though I feel it is my responsibility to already know.

I do not step lightly into this task.  For many months I raised and cared for each of these 213 pages.  Now, like Dr. Frankenstein, I have to operate on a monster for these insights to live on.  Thank you in advance, Wendy Belcher, for being my assistant.  And thank you, readers, for your own experiences about how you managed this task.

Being a Student Again

As a recent graduate, I have pondered my journey to completion and what it actually took to get here.  Even though the Louisville Writing Project Invitational Summer Institute hours applied toward my coursework, my official entrance into the doctoral program came the fall of 2011 with a seminar course.  For many students, I can imagine, their initial experiences in a program can determine their trajectory for the remainder of their studies.

This seminar introduction to deciphering qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods; writing literature reviews; and developing a path for research was akin to mental Olympics.  I felt pushed, pulled, and stretched in new, very demanding directions.  For the first time in a very long time, my brain felt out of shape.  For over seven years I had attended professional development, created innovative lessons, crunched impossible amounts of data, and learned how to be a more effective teacher, but none of these experiences trained me to run this marathon.

During that first semester, I remember wondering if I would ever learn it all.  Would or could I learn enough to earn a doctorate?  Fortunately, our professor named our fears and welcomed them.  He encouraged us to wrangle literature and make sense of published data.  My brain hurt.  I felt, well, dumb, and may have said as much to my classmates (and professor).  By the end of the semester, though more knowledgeable, we all had glazed eyes with expressions of "what the hell have I gotten myself into?!" plastered on our faces.

When I think about some of my attempts with data collection and analysis even closer to the end of my coursework a few years ago, I realize now the incredible patience my professors must have had.  For instance, only experienced researchers should attempt to record and analyze unstructured interview conversations and try to make sense of their contextual significance or explain that significance in class.  Thankfully, I learned from these experiences.  With guidance and understanding (surely everyone has early researcher mistake stories), my professors modeled what I hoped to become.

Being a student influenced my teacher lens in my middle school classroom.  I hope I became more sensitive to students' struggles, more flexible with my instructional approaches, clearer in my expectations.  At the minimum, I hope I found ways to stretch my students' brains.  For that reason, I encourage teachers to pursue higher education--a master's degree, endorsement or certification, or doctorate.  Enroll in MOOCs or a study group to which you are accountable in some way.  Be a student again.  Yes, we have well over eighteen years under our belts as students, but (sigh) that is the same argument we hear with members of legislature.  Becoming a student after being a teacher revealed insights I never would have discovered otherwise.  I promise it was worth it.

Terminal Degree as the Beginning

As I listened to Ashley Miller speak at the doctoral hooding ceremony about her fears of not graduating, of that dreaded email requiring one more course or one more draft, I realized how real my own fears had become.  The time-line of defending my dissertation at the end of March, addressing the committee's recommendations in early April, sending the revised draft to my adviser soon afterwards, submitting the final dissertation to the graduate school before April 22, and the ceremony on May 13, intensified these fears rather than relieved them.  And when I was in line to step onto the stage, I held back the urge to look inside the cardboard tube with the University of Louisville seal to see if anything was inside.

The ceremony marked the transition to "Doctor" as one to be taken with great responsibility.  Dr. Beth Boehm, vice provost for graduate affairs, assured our families that a terminal degree meant "the end"--no more coursework or dissertation drafts.  Yet, this journey is just beginning.  As doctoral students, we learned how to create new knowledge.  Through our doctoral programs, we discovered the needs within our communities.  Our new terminal degrees have positioned us as researchers, creators, and problem solvers.

Through courses in education and literacy theory, teaching writing, cognitive coaching, and qualitative research design and methods, I discovered the need for "small data."  I am prepared to analyze trends, identify learning gaps, and further disaggregate data as tiny lenses into education; yet, more exists to be seen and heard.  My dissertation research study narrated the stories of a teacher leadership team and the liaisons across the country who developed and implemented a Literacy Design Collaborative professional development workshop called Assignments Matter.  Narratives such as these show us effective ways into big data.  Teacher and student narratives help us see the faces behind the numbers.

Inspired by the speakers' encouraging words, my adviser Dr. Penny Howell's vote of confidence, and my professor Dr. Lori Norton-Meier's special congratulations, I enter the next phase of my education.  Empowered with the knowledge of how to create new knowledge, I attend to the literacy and professional development needs within education through organizations such the Illinois Writing Project.  And although I hesitated to add "Ph.D." to my C.V. until it was official, I now have a signed parchment that no one can take away from me--I'd like to see them try.

Career Crossroads with a Ph.D.

When I started the Ph.D. program nearly five years ago it was because I needed to know about literacy instruction, how it affected my middle school students, and how to do it better.  Fast forward four and a half years and see how the direction has shifted ever so slightly.  But a few degrees on the compass changes everything.

My dissertation, successfully defended on March 28, 2016, documented a narrative inquiry study about planning professional development.  Interest in literacy instruction and student motivation led to studying those topics, but this interest also led to presenting at conferences, co-facilitating institutes, and planning large-scale professional development to be implemented across the country.  My friend and colleague in the National Writing Project who I worked with in the most recent planning adventure has often said that teaching her high school students fills her.  That is partially true of me, too.  But more so, being with other teachers as we plan, work through school demands, and become smarter together fills me.

Knowing I belong in a professional development or adult-learning career, I have applied to various universities within the metro area.  I also keep my eyes open for curriculum positions.  So today I come to a crossroads in my career.  As I consider my family and the ages of my children, the idea of commuting to a university in downtown Chicago makes me queasy.  I continue to apply for positions at these institutions of higher learning because I am passionate about teaching pre- and in-service teachers.  However, commuting to satellite campuses and teaching online courses are my best family-friendly options.  Unfortunately, a newly-minted Ph.D. cannot (or should not?) make demands such as these.

Nervous and scared of the unknown, I began applying to the local school districts when junior high language arts position openings started appearing.  After teaching 8th grade in Kentucky for ten years, this feels safe to me.  No matter what I tell myself about needing some Illinois classroom experience or getting known in a school district, it is safe. Period.  My whole family would continue comfortably within my comfort zone (and theirs, too) if I return to the middle school/junior high classroom.

A few degrees on my compass has changed my direction and now I'm facing risks, a scary unknown.  I realize now that I should embrace the words spoken by the director of national programs at the National Writing Project during our recent initiative:

You know it's scary but you keep having these experiences where you walk up to that scariness and then you do it and then you're on the other side of it and you realize you can do things you didn't know you could do.

Am I ready to walk up this new pathway?  Is my family ready for the scariness of possible commutes, irregular hours, unpredictable pay?

It's time to decide.  My next interview is in just a few hours and I need to prepare my answer if offered a position.

Leadership of Reflective Inquiry

As I viewed the responses this morning for my Advanced Reading Methods course, I felt my heart getting fuller with the depth of thinking and connections I found on the discussion board.  The graduate students wrote at length about classroom experiences and contexts that pushed them to dig deeper into studying what might work for their own students.  They highlighted excerpts from the Best Practices text, as would be expected in a reading response, but also shared their struggles with rising to the expectations teachers should have for themselves when using "best practices" in their classrooms. While the posts shared elements of "still trying" and "not there yet," the writings carried with them a sense of reflecting for the purpose of inquiring forward, of unmasking weaknesses in order to find strength in the community and the texts.  Peers have begun sharing resources and posing questions of each other, probing for more context so they can both understand and prompt for internally persuasive dialogue. 

My friend in the National Writing Project said she has witnessed teachers all over the country get together to figure things out.  Teachers in different content areas, grade levels, and departments have the capacity to think through issues and work towards solutions.  We see this in groups of teachers who know individually they do not have the answers, who see the group as being smarter than any one entity.

This brings me to the role a leader has in a class, organization, or small group.  A leader, whether he/she is a teacher leader, an administrator, or PD provider must understand the situation of the inquiry or problem, the interaction among the group members, and the continuity or time line for action.  A leader knows how these three elements intersect to create the dynamics of reflective inquiry.  If a leader is responsible for managing the moving parts, how can the leader also solve the problem?  In knowing the terrain, the leader within a school setting can make clear the path for teachers to do the hard work of reflecting, inquiring, testing, and analyzing.

My role in this course was assigning a text, setting up a discussion board, and designing a calendar of assignments.  Much of my syllabus is a credit to my friend and newly-graduated PhD.  My adjustments made the course more accessible to online learning but did not change the content or focus. But I must pause here to acknowledge a leader's role in a course.  The leader's preparation before the course begins builds the foundation for students to be participatory in the work of each class.  I believe the group is smarter than the individual. I especially believe any group I teach will be smarter in many ways than I will be as its instructor.

As a leader in the sense that I instruct classes, I need to acknowledge that it's okay to be the leader and not in charge of the learning. Sheridan Blau, a keynote speaker for a National Writing Project annual meeting spoke of research surrounding the proficiency of professionals in different fields.  What I need to remember is that research says having questions and feeling inadequate signals proficiency or at least the desire to get there.  If we think we are proficient, we probably aren't.  It makes me chuckle to think about my friend in the Writing Project who says she hopes feeling dumb is actually a sign of how smart she is--I laugh at this because she really is one of the smartest people I know.

My dissertation research into reflective inquiry has me questioning how group members work together with and as leaders to plan professional development.  I want to know what fosters or hinders reflective inquiry in our professional development planning.  At first, I thought the backtalk of authoritative discourse and internally persuasive discourse would be the static I would need to tune into.  Then I realized the backtalk of these discourses pushes thinking but does not necessarily hinder or foster inquiry.  I paused then to consider the leadership roles within our group and discovered the growth of reflective inquiry when clear leadership is present.  A leader who defines the context, poses questions, and trusts the members with the thinking process encourages and fosters reflective inquiry.  What happens sometimes, though, is people may enter the discussion without having hold of all the necessary intersecting elements in reflective inquiry.

To engage in reflective inquiry, one must look backward to dissect favorable and unfavorable events and experiences so that some may be repeated and others may (hopefully) never be seen again.  At the same time, a reflective inquirer must see enough value in the present work to want to see its positive effects in a different, future context.  If a future value cannot be determined or cannot be seen, whether personally, professionally, in part, or in whole, the inquiry can die before taking root.  A reflective inquirer recognizes adaptability in the problem, solution, and him/herself. Reflective inquiry is about seeking answers to future questions while solving present problems.

I do not know all the answers.  I ask questions, think deeply, ponder inadequacies, and learn constantly.  Am I a reflective inquirer?  I hope so.  My future in teaching will be bleak if I cannot re-envision past lessons and learn from all my previous experiences.  But once I know all the answers, I think I can retire from teaching and leading.

Countdown to Comps

My advisers told me that I can't take any more classes after I finish these in May.  Certainly I need to know more.  A huge body of knowledge waits for further investigation and exploration.  But I have to complete comprehensive exams sometime, and June looks like the time.

Has anyone else suffered more nervousness in the last semester of coursework than in the beginning?  I have only begun the process of walking through the exam requirements and I don't feel ready.  Have I really gleaned all I could from every class experience and every teacher who has taught them?

I think I have seen some signs that perhaps I am ready or nearly there.  Usually my classmates and I latch onto the theories or methodologies presented in the current class or fall in love with particular research topics.  That has been true for me until very recently.  During the summer and fall, we learned about various qualitative research traditions.  During the fall, I noticed a change in some of us.  Instead of oooing and ahhing over each one, we each showed distinct passions for different traditions.  We expressed our own opinions and even wrinkled our noses at some different methodologies chosen by our colleagues.

Recently, a friend of mine sent me an article link that showed the artistic side of State of the Union Address, clearly an arts based researcher's dream.  But I have trouble understanding that tradition.  I love stories.  Narrative inquiry and discourse analysis intrigue me.

Teacher agency and voice.  This is the story I want to learn and want to tell.  What helps the teacher find a confident voice?  Will confident voices inspire teacher agency and advocacy?  These are questions I have today.  They may change slightly tomorrow, but I will still search for the story.  And I will be ready.

Writing for Publication Fears

It is finally here--the last semester of coursework before I conquer comprehensive exams, submit a proposal, conduct research, write a dissertation, defend the dissertation, and finish.  So perhaps the end is not really in sight at all.  The strange thing is I am more worried about successfully completing one of my classes this semester than I have been about coursework since my first few weeks in the literacy program.  As a qualitative researcher, I would have thought statistics might rank as the biggest scare, but it so far has not come close to what I fear in "Writing for Publication."

In this class, we are expected to submit a polished manuscript to a journal (in addition to reading, responding, discussing, etc.).  Why is this task so frightening?  In previous semesters, I have gathered data, coded, used data software, written memos, and summarized findings.  I have written literature reviews, compiled digital portfolios with extensive hyperlinks, and mindmapped my heart out.  I have submitted conference proposals (and presented), redesigned a course syllabus, and planned workshops.  The journey to this point has been rich with incredible learning experiences.  So what makes this class different?  The audience just got tougher.

First of all, I have no idea what my topic might be.  My inclination is to pick up a narrative I worked on last semester about co-teaching with a friend of mine.  Yet, even though it has embedded research, it is still a narrative which may not find a journal home.  Another thought is to flesh out the experiences of last summer's institute attendees as we begin planning for next summer.  This appeals to me right now in ways it didn't before I had to think about what to write for this class.

Next, I am not sure which journal I should woo.  Most familiar are Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, English Journal, Voices in the Middle, and Language Arts.  Others are probably more appropriate for what I will write, though.  I am not really interested in writing about strategies at this point but about experiences in particular learning conditions--especially the adult learners (teachers) during professional development.

All these obstacles will be overcome with time.  Fortunately, I know the professor pretty well.  She, along with the others in the class, will do what we always do in this PhD program--support and push.  I have already made progress in pushing away the fears of writing by, yes, writing.  My phantom audience has allowed me to voice my concern, list my strengths, and discuss some action items (thank you).  I feel the familiar release that writing gives me.  And for now the fog clears.